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The Xi Ursae Majoris system was settled early in the history of human colonization and exploration and was one of those systems to remain a part of the Terran Alliance even after the issue of the Demarcation Declaration.[6]

Xi Ursae Majoris VIII - more commonly known simply as Alula Australis - is the eighth and outermost planet in the Xi Ursae Majoris system. Alula Australis has been home to a number of industrial manufacturing concerns over the centuries.[3]

Alula Australis was one of the worlds that remained a part of the Terran Alliance following the Outer Reaches Rebellion and the Demarcation Declaration of 2242,[6] and became one of the worlds within the Alliance Core region of the Terran Hegemony.[7] The Free Worlds League evidently attempted to press claims to Alula Australis, and the planet benefited investments from both nations during the Star League era, becoming a major industrial world. Exported from Alula Australis in considerable quantities were electronics, industrial metals, power generation systems and even BattleMechs.[3]

Alula Australis changed hands numerous times during the Succession Wars although there remained a long association between the planet and the Free Worlds League.[8] The large-scale BattleMech manufacturing center on Alula Australis made it a tempting target for aggression, and the facilities were destroyed no less than four times during the Succession Wars - once by the Capellan Confederation, twice by the Lyran Commonwealth and once by the Free Worlds League Military, the latter being an attempt to deny them to invading enemy forces.[1]

The Lyrans evidently recaptured Alula Australis at some point after 2789, but in 2799 the Alula Australis system was captured by the Free Worlds League again in a lighting assault by Captain-GeneralKenyon Marik that was so swift a pair of mercenary BattleMech battalions employed by the Lyrans were left stranded on the planet.[10]

Rather than attack the stranded mercenaries, Kenyon Marik accepted pledges of loyalty from the mercenaries and their commanding officers and allowed both battalions to remain in place as a garrison.[10]

In 2838 the Free Worlds League Military was struggling under the combination of the ComStarinterdiction of the Free Worlds League and Parliament's efforts to choke off funding to the military. Both the Capellan Confederation and Lyran Commonwealth had taken advantage of the League's woes to make military gains, with the Lyran Commonwealth Armed Forces expanding two major salients into the League with ruthless efficiency. However, in 2838 the FWLM forces fighting a tenacious defense in the League systems of the former Terran Hegemony found their LCAF opponents being hampered by expeditions from the Draconis Combine and Federated Suns, both looking to make gains of their own from the weakened League. Alula Australis was one of the systems caught up in this - the LCAF had landed the Ninth Lyran Guards on the planet and were well on their way to crushing the FWLM garrison when the Fourth Avalon Hussars arrived as part of an Armed Forces of the Federated Suns expeditionary force. Both competent and determined, the Hussars battled the Guards for six weeks, until both formations were battered and bloodied and forced to withdraw - leaving the remains of the FWLM garrison to resume control over the system.[12]

The fourth and last time the BattleMech factories on Alula Australis were destroyed was in 2947, at which point Captain-General Brock Marik decided to relocate the production facilities to Savannah, a system deeper in the interior of the Free Worlds League and further away from the Lyran border at the time; the loss of the manufacturing facilities pushed the economy of Alula Australis into a depression that lasted for decades.[1] The former site of the BattleMech plant, originally known as Cedar Ridge, subsequently earned the nickname "Cinder Ridge" because of how often the plant had been attacked.[2]

After the better part of fifty years the fortunes of those on Alula Australis finally improved when deposits of gemstones and rare earth minerals were discovered in the mountain ranges near New Horizon City, the planetary capital city. Mining and exporting these mineral resources allowed the planetary economy to rebound, and by the end of the Third Succession War the rare earth metals were being used in chemical industries[1] in the cities of Cirebon and Leng-kong on Locke[2] and within the Mosiro system while the gemstones - which were predominantly sapphires - were being shipped to Atreus for use in top-secret technological experiments. ComStar had spent some time attempting to determine what the experiments being conducted on Atreus were, but without success.[1]

In 3009 an attack on Alula Australis was launched by the Lyran Commonwealth, who deployed the Nineteenth Lyran Guards and - at the request of Cranston Snord - the mercenary unit Snord's Irregulars. Snord's interest in Alula Australis was a collection of portraits by the famous artist Davials which had reportedly been hidden there. The attack ran afoul of a hidden fighter base; the Lyran forces were cut off from their DropShips by the 405th Aerospace Wing (also called the 405th Fighter Wing), while heavy ground units wore them down. Snord's Irregulars found the hidden fighter base and managed to destroy enough fighters to end the enemy air superiority, so that their own DropShips could pick them up.The 405th Aerospace Wing was notable for including several rare Land Air 'Mechs, namely a Phoenix Hawk LAM and three Stinger LAMs.[13]

At the end of the Third Succession War Alula Australis was part of a three-world province within the Free Worlds League known as the Border Protectorate, the other worlds being Denebola and Zosma; the Border Protectorate was a relatively new province headed by a military dictator and represented in the Free Worlds League Parliament by two representatives. All three worlds of the Border Protectorate were economically depressed and heavily guarded as a result of the repeated invasions of the region over the three Succession Wars, and while both the dictator of the Protectorate and his appointed Parliament representatives were vocal supporters of House Marik and the ongoing war efforts, popular sentiment on all three worlds lay in completely the opposite direction.[8]

With the formation of the Border Protectorate the former mercenary forces that had sworn allegiance to Kenyon Marik in the First Succession War became the lead regiment of the Protectorate Guard, the provincial forces of the Border Protectorate.[10]

While the Border Protectorate was run as a military dictatorship in 3025, the planetary government was actually one of the more notable examples of a planetary oligarchy within the Free Worlds League.[14]

During the Fourth Succession War Alula Australis fell under Lyran control. Following the sudden invasions of several League worlds by the Tikonov Free Republic and a daringly successful invasion of Callison by mercenaries employed by the Lyran Commonwealth in mid-3029, Captain-GeneralJanos Marik found himself in the midst of an unanticipated crisis. In addition to the conquest of Callison, LCAF communications traffic and movements had spiked sharply, creating the impression of an impending offensive against the League. Faced with what he believed to be the plausible threat of a large-scale attack aimed at the region of the League near Terra, Janos was more concerned with saving the six or seven assorted BattleMech regiments present within the region than he was with retaining the worlds, as he believed that the offensive would most likely be aimed at snipping off the corner of the League closest to Terra - and to both the Federated Suns and the Tikonov Free Republic. Alula Australis was one of the systems abandoned by Janos, who would learn later that he had been deceived by an effective campaign of smoke and mirrors arranged by the Commonwealth General of the Armies, Edward Regis, to deter the League from launching an invasion of the Commonwealth while the LCAF was heavily committed to its invasion of the Draconis Combine.[15][16][17]

As late as 3067 the cornerstones of the economy on Alula Australis remained mining and refining, although petrochemical extraction and processing were also significant industries. The major industry in New Horizon City was the smelting of ferrous metals and the purification of rare earth metals for use in microelectronics. The gemstones dug out of mines remained in high demand, particularly the sapphires from Locke, and many gemstones extracted from mines on Alula Australis ended up in jewelers across the Inner Sphere.[2]

The centuries of heavy industry on Alula Australis had resulted in damage to the local environment, particularly around the cities, where the city surrounds were commonly pockmarked with working and abandoned mines and quarries, many of which were littered with machinery left to rust after the deposits were exhausted. Industrial pollution had also damaged freshwater bodies such as Lake Pattaya, and environmental groups were becoming increasingly vocal about the need for protection and clean-up measures. While the federal government had given backing to cleanup efforts the ruling body on Alula Australis, the Council of Nobles, was largely unsupportive of such measures due to the greed of its various members.[2]

In late June 3070 the planetary government and military forces on Alula Australis switched their allegiance to the Word of Blake, bringing the world into the Word of Blake Protectorate; Alula Australis was one of six worlds to declare for the Blakists in the space of a week, pushing the Protectorate into Free Worlds League space.[18]

During the Dark Age Alula Australis continued to remain a heavily industrialized world, with major industrial centers located on all three continents. The city of Sturgeon dominated the Hubbes River Valley region during this era, and was home to the largest chemical corporation on the planet, AA PolyChem Unlimited.[3]

House Marik (The Free Worlds League) makes references to Alula Australis having originally been a Lyran world prior to the Succession Wars and to the system having been conquered by Captain-General Geralk Marik in 2458 as well as the site of the first full-scale BattleMech manufacturing plant in the Free Worlds League.[1] This information is inconsistent with later publications, which clearly show that the Alula Australis system remained a part of the Terran Alliance after the Demarcation Declaration and subsequently one of the core systems within the Terran Hegemony.[6][20][23][24][7][27] This confusion is possibly due to the borders of the Terran Alliance and Terran Hegemony not being well-defined at the point at which House Marik (The Free Worlds League) was published, and elements of this early history appear to have also influenced later publications such as Dark Age: Republic Worlds (3130) and Handbook: House Marik. It is also possible that Alula Australis was confused with other worlds with similar names, such as Tania Australis, Asellus Australis or Alula Borealis.

Handbook: House Marik records Geralk Marik capturing Alula Australis and Bella I in 2459 as well as attempting to capture Loric[70] - given the close proximity of these latter two worlds to Alula Borealis, it would seem likely that Alula Borealis has been confused with Alula Australis.

Handbook: House Marik also records the defection of Lyran technicians with the required plans to construct BattleMechs in 2462 followed by House Marik using BattleMechs for the first time to push back a Lyran offensive at Alula Australis[71] in 2470.[72] Alula Australis was one of the core worlds of the Terran Hegemony at this point, again making it likely that Alula Australis has been mistaken for another system.

House Marik (The Free Worlds League) details that Alula Australis was producing rare earths for in use on Cirebon, Longkeng and Mosiro.[2]Handbook: House Marik appears to have amended this somewhat, creating two cities on Alula Australis named Cirebon and Long-keng, but associating those cities directly with petrochemical extraction and refining.[2] It is therefore unclear if the Cirebon and Longkeng mentioned in House Marik (The Free Worlds League) refer to the Free Worlds League systems of the same name or the cities on Alula Australis.